A campaign with artists to raise awareness about autism

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credits: JOEL SAGET / AFP 11:23 a.m., April 2, 2024

With comedians Paul Mirabel and Elie Semoun, actor Francis Perrin and writer Asperger Paul El Kharrat, the government is launching a campaign on Tuesday, World Autism Awareness Day, to raise awareness of this disorder.

"There are 700,000 autistic people in France. We want to help society better understand how these people develop and understand that their exclusion is unjustified. Disabled people are fellow citizens in their own right... and not apart ", declared Fadila Khattabi, Minister of Persons with Disabilities, presenting this campaign to the press on Thursday. The three clips are a collaboration of people personally concerned by autism: screenwriter Minh Tran Huy, Elie Semoun, and Francis Perrin, as parents, Paul Mirabel with his brother or Paul El Kharrat, champion of Douze Coups de Midi on TF1.

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“Collective specificities”

“There are as many forms of autism as there are autistic people”, but there are “collective specificities”, which we have chosen to highlight to make this disorder “more visible and more readable”, explains director and co-writer Hélène Grémillon: the communication difficulties of autistic people and their sensory hypersensitivity. “I experience the lack of knowledge about autism every day. My neighbor told me to put a straitjacket on my son and send him to an asylum because he was making too much noise,” said co-writer Minh. Tran Huy.

The third clip evokes the guilt of mothers: "The doctor said to my wife: 'your child is autistic, but Madam, you are a redhead! And have you seen the age difference between the two of you? Are you surprised'", told AFP Francis Perrin, who plays there with his son and his wife. A feeling of guilt also experienced by the screenwriter: "in 2015, in a medical-psycho-pedagogical center, I was told that my son's troubles were undoubtedly linked to my foreign origin: the departure of my parents from Vietnam and their experience had caused trauma on my son,” Minh Tran Huy told AFP. “I was prescribed parent-baby psychotherapy. However, my husband, on my side, was not asked any questions,” she explains.

These psychoanalytically inspired approaches do not comply with the good practices recommended by the High Authority of Health. The three clips will be broadcast from April 2 on television channels (France TV, M6, Canal+, etc.), in some 200 cinemas and on social networks.